Posts tagged “climate”

As sales of the art creation app Canvas Art climb version 1.1.0 was released this morning. The update includes improvements and bug fixes when editing very large images but far more important this new version brings in support for some foreign languages. Many applications are created in English only because it is the default language and the majority of sales come from english speaking regions. However, foreign users should not be ignored. So today I am kicking off with support for Spanish, French, and Italian languages and support for many more in the coming months.

Canvas Art is an iOS application that allows users to create art ranging from a sketch or line art style, water-color type look to a crisp canvas painting with just a couple of easy steps. Canvas Art is both a standalone application that allows camera use, importing, and exporting images from and to numerous sources and is also a Photos Editing Extension for the native Apple Photos application. Users are able to choose a canvas, tan, white, or gray, and set the intensity of fill color on the canvas with looks ranging from washed out to photo like. After that the special charcoal outline effect is added and users have a wide range of intensities to work from. The finished product looks like canvas painting or charcoal sketch.

You can learn more and download your own copy of Canvas Art at the link below. It truly costs less than a cup of coffee with no up-sell and no ads.

They say it’s the smog that makes Southern California sunsets so spectacular. Kind of makes sense, we all think of smog as a toxic mix of various deadly chemicals. It is easy to think of these chemicals being a myriad of colors and luminescent gasses reacting with each other spewing a gambit of colors. Maybe those molecules are represented by the colors of the periodic table give that impression, it’s easy to imagine. We all know that light illuminates color in objects especially transparent ones. Take a thick layer of smog, put the sun behind it and holy cow, you should get yourself one heck of a colorful sunrise or set. It all makes perfect sense.

As I learn more about light and how it behaves I started to think maybe there is just a little more to it than that. As it turns out, the whole line of thought is false. First, lets take a look at what it is that makes sunrises and sets more colorful in the first place. During these times (the golden hours) the sun’s light rays travel throughout the longest distances of the earth’s atmosphere. Light is made of different size wave lengths presenting different colors of the spectrum. The blue or cool side being the shorter, weaker waves. As these rays of light encounter obstacles, for example an oxygen molecule, the shorter waves of the blue spectrum get stripped away and scatter off into the atmosphere. This is also why the sky is blue. When it happens the intensity of the light ray decreases and visually light becomes orange/red and more saturated. Those orange and red charged light rays are what causes the vivid colors. Contrary to the myth, large particles of dust and pollution block too much of the light and colors tend to become muted and very low in intensity. In a spectacular sunrise or set the unadulterated light generally does not illuminate other colored objects but rather reflects off of objects like water and clouds.

How that light gets to these object is also important. Higher clouds like cirrus tend to show the most vivid colors. This is because the portion of the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface known as the boundary layer contains most of the dust, haze and pollutants. Its density tends to dull the colors and lower the intensity to the point that lower clouds are not as vivid. In fact the very best light is those rays that pass just above the boundary layer and reflect off the higher clouds. This occurs just before or after the sun is in view. That gives credence to the saying “start early and leave late”.

Saying “its the smog that makes the sunsets so great” is just fine for the movies but in real life it is just not true. Lets give the myth its last rites and bury it for good.